Sweet Korean BBQ and Sweet Potato Tacos

I always seem to pride myself on not taking shortcuts when cooking. I like to make things from scratch and love spending time on weekends and days off trying to learn complicated recipes from start to finish. But I also sometimes eat nachos for dinner. Um, nachos for dinner is NOT even a dinner shortcut… It’s just pure laziness. OK and maybe a serious passion for nachos, too. But really.

Shortcuts are OK. Shortcuts are good. Especially when you work full-time and get home when it’s dark out and you still have 50 million things to get done before you can go to sleep. Shortcuts mean getting a real homemade dinner on the table without having to stand in the kitchen for an hour when all you want to do is watch 3 episodes of How I Met Your Mother (marathon watching it!) and collapse into bed.

As part of the DailyBuzz Food publisher program, I was asked to sample one of Cambell’s Skillet or Slow Cooker Sauces. I realized that if I made a meal with one of the sauces in slow cooker, I would legit have to do nothing to prepare for dinner when I got home from work. And guess what? It worked. This meal took me less time to make after work than a plate of nachos. Boom.

I decided to use the Sweet Korean BBQ Slow Cooker Sauce to make a sweet and spicy taco with beef and sweet potatoes. I put basically all of the ingredients in the slow cooker in the morning. And when I came home, I put them in a tortilla and dinner was served. Why can’t everything in life be this easy? At least on weekdays. I don’t mind if weekends are a bit more difficult.

I didn’t even take step-by-step photos of the making of this dish because I was all about speed. And while I love blogging and photographing, it adds a lot of work and time to my meal-making. Sometimes I feel so free and easy when I’m cooking and not photographing.

This recipe has made me realize that I need to stop abandoning my slow cooker so much. Coming home to dinner is pretty much the best thing ever. And coming home to a perfectly sweet and spicy dinner is the cherry on top. This sauce was wonderful in that it nicely coated the meal and added a sweet touch, without being too sweet or too much. I used the Thai chiles to balance the sweet out and add in a little kick and it worked well.

Sweet Korean BBQ and Sweet Potato Tacos (serves about 8):

2 lb. boneless beef chuck

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced into 1” cubes

1 large onion, sliced finely

1 clove garlic, minced

4 Thai red chiles, chopped finely

1 package Campbell’s Sweet Korean BBQ Slow Cooker Sauce

8 large flour tortillas

Cilantro

Sour cream

Instructions:

1) Place boneless beef chuck in a slow cooker set to low (you can sear it first if you want…. it’s easy if your slow cooker has a stovetop setting!). Add in sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, and red chiles.

2) Cover with slow cooker sauce.

3) Cover slow cooker and let cook for about 7-8 hours (can also cook on high for 4-5 hours if desired)

4) Remove beef and shred it with a fork before returning it to the slow cooker.

6) Put mixture in the center of a tortilla and top with cilantro and sour cream.

Dinner is served. And I barely had to exert any energy. Which is often a goal of mine when I arrive home from work. Well done. Also, I had so many leftover that it’s quite possible that I won’t have to exert energy for the next few days. Love it when that happens. Hello, couch, please make room for me now.

What shortcuts do you take?

[Sues]

This post brought to you by Campbell’s Dinner Sauces. Weekend-worthy dinners with only weekday-level effort needed! Learn more at http://www.campbellsauces.com/.

Like you I love making recipes from scratch on weekends and often spend a whole day making different recipes, but on weeknights it’s awesome to have something like this to turn to. These tacos sound super-flavorful. And I love that you can make the filling in the slow cooker!